CSTA-organized Saturday Afternoon Virtual CS for K-5? K-8? Families?

[Mark L. Miller Ph.D.]

(Re-sent due to sending from the wrong account. Apologies if you receive twice.)

Smita and I have begun kicking around the idea of offering some Saturday afternoon virtual events for CS during the shelter-in-place. We would use some combination of Blue Jeans and Zoom Pro, depending on the needs and format. We would look to local CSTA members to help lead, along with colleagues in related organizations who have interest. This would be all-volunteer, all free. We might aim at K-5, or possibly expand to K-8 at some point. It would be intended entirely as a community service during a time need, with no commercial intent for anyone involved. If you are interested, please join the discussion. (If the traffic gets heavy, we can make a sublist to protect the inboxes of those who don’t have time or interest.) Although the focus would be the 7-8 counties that began the shelter-in-place first, there is no reason (unless we overload on bandwidth or something) that we shouldn’t allow families from other counties or even other states to join. Things we need to sort out would be the range of topics, who teaches what, for how long, with which tools, how to make it more of an emphasis on recreation that doesn’t feel like “more school,” whether/how to include other family members, etc. With features like “Breakout Rooms” we could make it similar to a “Hack the Future” event, with different rooms representing different “tables” students could join, perhaps. Anyway, if you are interested in something along these lines and willing to pitch in a few hours on a Saturday afternoon, please reply.

We could also talk about high school down the road, if well-received, but would love to avoid making it all about what’s on the AP test. Perhaps initially some of the high school students might help as “junior mentors”? This needs to be FUN.

Stay home and be safe!

Best, Mark

Mark L. Miller, Ph.D.

Executive Director

Learningtech.org

San Carlos, CA 94070
mlmi...@learningtech.org

mark....@northeastern.edu
650-598-0105 x203 (Please dial 203, not 0perator, for fastest response!)